Metal flashing at grade level?

This is a new one on me, anyone seen it before? Home built 1995 on a grade that slopes back to a crawlspace foundation. There is what appears to be a metal flashing covering one entire side of the exposed foundation above grade and wraps about 4-6 feet around each end. It is spaced out about 1.5" from the foundation. I’m not sure about much other than if it is supposed to route water away from the foundation and crawlspace it has failed miserably.

Termite shield??

Termites are extremely rare here.

Protect the foundation insulation.

Z-flashing on a wood frame wall. Looks like an addition over an over sized slab. Rot may be due to sealing the bottom of the siding with no drainage.

seen sheet metal clad once to lipstick-on-a-pig rotten pwf

seen once
w/sheet metal clad as an attempt to lipstick-on-a-pig by a flipper for a failed pwf

Looks like a some sort of Z flash at first glance but pretty sure not it’s intended purpose. Here is a picture of one of the ends where it wraps around and terminates right at a grade level foundation vent. :roll:

Big surprise there… My first thought was “what are they trying to cover?” but typical concrete from what I could tell.

I really think they were trying to handle the water from the hillside by creating a channel either next to the foundation or on the outside of the metal but I have never seen anything like it.

I’ve seen this when the slab is wider than the roof trusses.

IE, the roof trusses came in too short or the foundation came in too big.

The flashing height above the flat horizontal edge looks very short and useless.

The top side is more like a nailing flange than flashing.

How far did the metal go down into the ground.

When someone put insulation foam on outside of foundation they used to put “coil casing” over it.